Read Chapter 20: Out of the Deep

The flooded corridor beyond the quarantine cell stretched into darkness, water lapping at Jack's chest. Voss's last words echoed in his ears—*buy me thirty seconds*—but he had already lost count of how many had passed. The hard-shell suit Voss had given him was rated for deep repair work, not for whatever waited in the collapsed section ahead. The organism knew the topology. It knew the crew's bodies. It knew Jack's route better than he did.

He swam forward, the suit's mounted lamp cutting a narrow beam through the murk. The water here was warm—too warm. Waste heat from the habitat's failing systems, or something else. The mark on his forearm burned through the suit's insulation, a low throb that kept time with his pulse.

The collapse zone began without warning. Ceiling panels had buckled inward, blocking the upper third of the corridor with twisted metal and shattered conduits. Jack's pressure gauge showed he was still in the survivable range, but the current had strengthened, pulling him sideways toward the breach where the Atlantic pressed against the habitat's failing skin.

He gripped a pipe and pulled himself through the gap between two fallen beams, the water closing over his helmet. The suit's scrubbers hummed, recycling air he couldn't afford to waste. Somewhere to his left, through six inches of alloy, was open ocean. The entity didn't need to drown him. It just needed him to delay.

Then he saw them.

Two figures stood at the far end of the collapsed section, barely visible through the turbid water. They wore the same repair suits as Jack's—one scratched and dented, the other pristine. They moved with synchronized precision, stepping forward in unison, their helmets darkened so he couldn't see their faces. The organism had claimed them completely. No hesitation, no individual intent. Just a single will wearing two bodies.

The one on the left raised its arm, and Jack saw the tool in its grip—a plasma cutter, still live, its tip glowing orange in the near-dark. The entity didn't need eyes to aim. It had topography memorized, angles calculated, three-dimensional physics unfolding behind a false mind.

Jack dove.

The water swallowed him, and he struck out for the far side of the collapse, using the current as cover. The plasma cutter carved through the water above him, superheating it into a roiling plume of steam and salt. He felt the burn through his suit's insulated skin, kicked hard, and wedged himself behind the folded slab of a bulkhead door.

He had thirty seconds. Maybe fewer now.

The two figures didn't move. They just stood there, watching the spot where he'd disappeared, patient as the trench itself. The entity understood strategy. It knew that Voss was the threat, not Jack, and it had positioned its enforcers exactly where their stationary presence forced him to engage.

The mark on his forearm flared hot enough to make him hiss.

He moved before the thought finished forming—an instinct honed by years of tight-wire repair work, where hesitation meant death in a vacuum. He launched himself upward, found handholds in the wrecked ceiling, and scrambled across the collapsed section like a rat through a burning ship. The plasma cutter swept toward him again, but he was already past the first figure, his boot connecting with its helmet, sending it spinning into the murk with a crack of metal on metal.

The second figure caught his ankle. The grip was inhuman in its strength—the organism didn't care about tissue damage, only function. It dragged him down, and Jack twisted, grabbing the plasma cutter from the first figure as it drifted past. He swung it in a blind arc and felt it connect with something solid. The second figure's grip released, and he was free.

He didn't check what he'd hit. He just swam.

The collapsed section opened into a vertical shaft, water rushing upward like a promise of release. At the top, a circular hatch stood ajar, daylight spilling through the gap. Jack hauled himself up, the suit groaning under the pressure change as the water drained off him. He slammed the hatch shut behind him and spun the locking wheel, buying himself more time than the organism would allow.

The telemetry tower rose above him, a skeletal monolith of rusted steel and cable runs, its transmitter dish angled toward the sky but listing hard to port. The storm Voss had predicted had stripped half its panels, and water pooled in the service platform at its base. The external access point was where Voss had said it would be—a small steel box, its lock corroded, hinges crusted with salt.

He crossed the platform, prying the box open. Inside, the transmitter's main fuse assembly hung like a dead bird, wires trailing. The connector housing had flooded at some point, and the terminals had corroded beyond simple repair. But Jack was a repair diver. He'd replaced fuses in worse conditions, in darker places, with the ocean pressing against his back and the clock bleeding seconds.

He pulled the spare fuse from his suit's outer pouch—Voss had thought ahead—and began the work. His fingers moved on their own, a muscle-memory dance of wire, terminal, and sealant. The mark on his forearm throbbed with each heartbeat, and the water below him began to stir.

That was when he heard the voice.

*Brother.*

Jack's hands froze. The tone was familiar—too familiar, layered with warmth and all of the childhood he'd tried to bury. He knew better. He knew why the entity spoke with that voice. But knowing didn't stop his chest from tightening, his breath from shortening.

*You don't have to finish this,* the voice said. *The water's warm down here. It doesn't hurt. Let it take the weight.*

Jack's hand came up on its own, the one with the mark, reaching toward the transmitter's control panel. The fingers curled. The mark flared white-hot, and he gasped, yanking the hand back with his other one.

"You're not him," Jack said, the words scraping out of him. "You don't get to wear his face."

*Do you remember what it was like?* The voice was softer now, gentler, the way Danny had spoken to him on the boat that last morning, before the line went taut and the sea took him. *That feeling of not being alone? I can give that back. I can make it so you never have to look over your shoulder again.*

"I was never looking over my shoulder," Jack said quietly, and for a moment, the memory of his brother's laugh rose up in him—sharp and bitter. "I was looking at the bottom of the ocean. Waiting for you to come up. You never did."

The silence that followed was its own kind of cold.

*I'm still down here, Jack.*

"Yeah," Jack said, and finished seating the fuse. "I know. That's why I'm doing this."

The transmitter hummed to life, its control panel blinking through a string of diagnostics. He routed the signal, realigning the dish's bearing toward the surface relay station where Voss would run the discordant frequency. But the tower chose that moment to lurch—a deep groan passing through its frame as the waterlogged foundation shifted beneath it. The flood had eroded the base faster than anyone had calculated. The tower was going to go over.

Jack checked the diagnostics. The signal would take ninety seconds to charge, then broadcast on his mark. He could override the timer from the relay station on the habitat's surface, but he didn't have ninety seconds. He had maybe forty before the tower toppled into the Atlantic, taking the transmitter—and any chance of success—with it.

He keyed in the countdown command, locking it at thirty seconds. Enough time for him to evacuate, just barely. He'd have to abandon the tower before it went over, leave the transmitter to its work, and trust the signal to reach Voss's receiver before the crash destroyed it.

The entity's voice was gone. Whatever portion of its attention had been focused on him had been spent. The mark on his arm pulsed once, weakly, then settled into a dull throb—receding, but not gone.

Jack turned, waded through the knee-deep water at the tower's base, and dove off the platform into the cold Atlantic below. He pushed the suit to its limit, swimming back toward the habitat's surface access hatch as the tower behind him issued a final, straining groan. He didn't look back. He counted.

Five seconds left when he broke through the maintenance lock and pulled himself onto the dry deck, the hatch sealing behind him with a wet thunk. The tower crash, when it came, was audible even through the hull—a distant crash of steel against water, then nothing.

Jack lay on his back on the deck plates, staring up at the flickering lights of the habitat. The transmitter was off. The tower was gone. Somewhere above him, on the surface, Voss would be waiting for a signal that was still traveling up a dead cable.

Or maybe she'd already gotten it. Maybe the signal was already broadcasting. Maybe the entity was already screaming.

Jack couldn't hear it. But for the first time since he'd descended, the station felt empty. Not abandoned—empty. Like a thing that had been waiting and had finally let go.

He stood, shaky, and turned toward the corridor that led to the flooded medical bay where Sam was waiting. The transmission tower was gone. The signal was out there. And somewhere in the darkness below, Tanaka's marrow waited in the cold.

The water dripped from his suit and pooled around his feet as he walked into the depths of the station.